Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Skinstad and White Robbed
How incredible is that? Bob and Jake walk in to the Australian airport and realise that the camera, laptop and allegedly their "playbook" were stolen.Most people would be talking about Bob being captain (KAK IDEA) or Jake selecting a second string team (You brilliant, brilliant man you). But I am more interested in them being robbed and the media hounding them upon arrival.Anyhoot, whatever, we sent a second string team, who cares, I think it's a shit idea to have the super 14, tri-nations and world cup in one year anyways. Go Jake.P.S: Bye bye Mr Smit and Mr Matfield we'll see you in the green and gold.
Australia's Performance and Cricket World Cup Final Ruined By Bad Light and Umpires
I have just finished watching the final of the 2007 Cricket World Cup. What a shocker. What were the umpires thinking? The light went bad and the Sri Lankans turned it down, the light got better. It rained and everyone went off the pitch, it stopped and everyone came back on, then it rained and the game went on. The light became so bad that the commentators could not tell who the players were and the umpires couldn't see enough to be able to call a wide. Then Australia celebrated their victory and were made to play on for 3 overs only to celebrate their victory again. A bad end to a great tournament that has been shadowed by some interesting and saddening events.Adam Gilchrist was phenomenal, 149 runs in the world cup final, incredible. I have posted on SA Rocks already about putting all feelings aside and honouring the best team in the world for three years in a row. Australia is undeniably and unequivocally the best cricket team in the world, again and again and again.Final outcome Australia won by 53 runs.My congratulations go out to them and their management. The best team won and we all know it.
South African Cricket World Cup is in Trouble
It is 17:30, 26.3 overs down as well as 7 wickets and 97 runs scored. We are in trouble.Trying to stay positive.
Bad Golf Day
Everyone has bad days, for some people they are bad hair days, bad clothes day, bad luck days and just bad days in general. For my brother.. it was a bad golf day. There is no need to explain, the video speaks for itself.
The Contender - Shocking
Going through the DSTV channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon i stumbled across The Contender. The Contender is a reality TV show based around boxing. However many fighters that couldn't cut it on their own in the world of boxing have been thrown together in a house to train and compete against one another for a shot at some title or another. That's not really important. At the end of each episode two boxers go head to head in a five round fight where one of them loses and is eliminated.The shocking part of this little story is that at these fights families are present. Now I'm not talking about brother, father, mother family. The family present at the fight on this evenings show were children, the boxers children, with their mothers/grandmothers watching over them.What message are we teaching our children by sending them to a boxing ring containing their fathers? The one little girl (maybe 10 years old) was shouting, jumping, screaming waving her arms yelling at/for/with her father to either kick the other boxers ass or for her father not to have his ass kicked. He lost, she cried, looked dissapointed and upset that her father had lost. This child had just witnessed her father take a voluntary beating in the name of money and was upset that he lost.Look, I've never seen my father get a butt whoopin' and I'm still pretty messed up. Imagine what this child is going to grow up believing in later in her life. It's ok to solve problems through violence. Violence is ok when it's for monetary gain. My father did it so why can't I?I just think that it is absolutely horrific that this is what we as viewers have become. We are willing to see people eat things, beat people, fight, scream, cheat, deface love all in the name of ratings on a TV show. It's not for me.
Southern Hemisphere Sports Domination?
Chatting to a mate of mine about sports while watching the Proteas whop Pakistan today, we decided that it's pretty sweet to live in the Southern Hemisphere. We both decided that the Southern Hemisphere (SH) dominates the world of sports in many areas.I decided that I should do some research in to this, and guess what I found? I found a lot of tables by alot of sources, took me a few minutes to find some reliable ranking pages but it has been done. Below you will see the tables for Rugby, Football, Hockey, Cricket and Netball.RED teams are Southern Hemisphere
| Position(last week) | Member Union | Rating points |
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| 1(1) | NEW ZEALAND | 92.91 |
| 2(2) | FRANCE | 87.53 |
| 3(3) | SOUTH AFRICA | 87.05 |
| 4(4) | AUSTRALIA | 86.13 |
| 5(5) | IRELAND | 82.01 |
| 6(6) | ENGLAND | 79.66 |
| 7(7) | SCOTLAND | 77.72 |
| 8(8) | ARGENTINA | 77.49 |
| 9(9) | WALES | 76.34 |
| 10(10) | SAMOA | 73.86 |
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1 | Australia | 128 | |
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2 | South Africa | 123 | |
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3 | New Zealand | 114 | |
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4 | Pakistan | 111 | |
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5 | India | 111 | |
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6 | Sri Lanka | 108 | |
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7 | West Indies | 106 | |
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8 | England | 97 | |
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9 | Bangladesh | 34 | |
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10 | Zimbabwe | 30 | |
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11 | Kenya | 0 | ||
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Australia | 130 | |
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2 | England | 119 | |
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3 | Pakistan | 112 | |
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4 | India | 111 | |
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5 | Sri Lanka | 103 | |
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6 | South Africa | 94 | |
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7 | New Zealand | 92 | |
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8 | West Indies | 72 | |
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9 | Zimbabwe | 28 | |
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10 | Bangladesh | 2 | ||
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Fifa World Football Rankings For October 2006 |
| Rank | Team | PtsOct 06 | +/-RankSep 06 | +/-PtsSep 06 |
| 1 | Brazil | 1649 | 0 | 19 |
| 2 | Italy | 1550 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | Argentina | 1479 | 0 | 7 |
| 4 | France | 1462 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | England | 1434 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 1322 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | Spain | 1309 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | Portugal | 1301 | 0 | 0 |
| 9 | Germany | 1229 | 0 | 0 |
| 10 | Czech R | 1223 | 0 | 0 |
So there they are... and I think I was wrong... SH is not the place to be in terms of sports. We (when I say we I include all nations, continents and states in the SH for a full list visit Wikipedia) need to do some work, hit the streets, crack the gyms, pump the iron and inject... no wait, thats illegal!!From the top:Rugby4 out of the top 10, 3 of those in the top 4.That pretty good. CricketOne Day Internationals: 5 out of the top 10, 3 of those in the top 3.Test Matches: 4 out of the top 10, 1 in the top position.Thats awesome, Cricket we definately dominate.Football2 in the top 10, 2 of those in the top 3.Thats not so good.Hockey5 out of the top 10, 2 of those in top 2. Thats pretty damn goodNetballMen: 4 out of top 10.Women: 3 out of top 10.Hockey Not So Good.So on average: We are dominated in 3 out of the above 5 sports. we only dominate in 2, Hockey and Cricket and that is merely because we have teams in the top 3.I think that in terms of the above sports there are a few countries that we all need to thank as SH inhabitants:Australia
New Zealand
South Africa
Brazil
Without these four countries, we would have no teams in any of the rankings in the top 5.
Schools pull out of rugby ranking system
I am not one of those old boys that wears his school brand 20 years after leaving school but I love my school and support it unashamedly. But one thing I do not agree with is the pressure that schools, players, parent and public put on 1st team players at school level.
A friend of mine, BigBev, alerted me to a story on rugby365.co.za that has surfaced. Certain Private school's have all banded together and decided to take their schools out of the rugby ranking systems available online. Not only are these schools pulling out of the rugby rankings, but are also pulling out of any ranking system at all.
The schools involved have noted that they feel that the ranking systems create unhealthy competition between school which they say has an indirect effect on "marketing, scholarships and post-matric issues, as well as relationships between schools, parents and old boys."
I think that this is a great move by these schools, however rugby365.co.za does have some interesting rebuttles:
How are schools going to stop people from ranking their rugby if the results of fixtures are made public? What is to stop me for example, from starting my own ranking site and keeping it up to date with the published results from the weekend?
They also noted that its a bit tought to blame the ranking sites and systems for bad blood between schools.
I think it's an interesting argument.